A blog named BETTY

Thursday, February 2, 2012

PHENOMENAL COSMIC POWERS! itty bitty living space

I have finally found a reason to come out of blogging semi-retirement. No, it's not some deep insight into life or touching story of my beautiful children. It is this: I am so proud of myself and I have to brag, errrr...share. I have fulfilled a life-time dream and have become an IKEA hacker! (Okay, technically I didn't even know about IKEA until I was in my 30's, but it seems like a lifetime ago, ergo the life-time dream. Okay.)

In case you've missed my 200 posts on Facebook about it, we have moved. And we have downsized. To the tune of about 50%. (At least until we finish soe basement.) Enter the necessity: Lots of stuff...little space. Followed by the birth of invention: Using every inch efficiently.

Let me just put this out there right now... I am THRILLED to downsize--that former house was like a 10 ton burden on me (although a very beloved burden. Much like children.)--and I am loving so much less real estate to care for. In addition, I have an odd attraction towards conquering spacial dilemmas. Especially since IKEA came on the scene with its itty-bitty European living quarters focus.

ADD to all of that......I now live 5 minutes closer to IKEA (putting my travel time at 3.5 minutes. I know! I'm living the dream!)

So, on to the actual reason for this post. My 4 children now share a bathroom that is, well, normal-size for the average American. And 3 of those kids are females in the prime of their vanity. Therefore, we are in need of big-time storage solutions. And we've previously established that I'm cheap, right? So I'm scouring IKEA on one of my weekly (daily?) expeditions, and I see this.




Which is designed for this:


On clearance. For $3.99.

And then I see a small glass shelf, on clearance for 99 cents. So I came up with this:


Times 3 (one for each female):

I know, right? But let's not leave out the tricky part, which is me realizing that the glass could slide right off the base and create havoc. So I used some clear plastic tubing, did this:

And snip snip:


And the finished product (thank you for holding your applause until the end):